Who owns cloning?

While the creators of Dolly the sheep may have cloned the first adult mammal, the Massachusetts company Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) has been granted the first major patent on cloning mammals from specialised fetal or adult cells.

With their patents still pending, Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh continue to reject ACT's claim that its technique differs significantly from the one used at Roslin to create Dolly (New Scientist, 19 September 1998, p 4). "This dispute is destined to get settled in the courts some day," says Steven Stice, a member of the ACT team now at the University of Georgia in Athens.

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